Let’s be extremely clear from the start: Arsenal of Democracy by Energy Whores is not here to be your “background music while you pretend to answer emails” album. This is not productivity-core. This is “someone just kicked your cubicle wall down with a synthesizer” music. Led by Carrie Schoenfeld, alongside guitarist Attilio Valenti, Energy Whores have made a record that feels less like an album and more like a sustained, meticulously engineered stress test for your political conscience. And somehow, it’s a blast.
The project grows out of the old protest-folk tradition, the Dylan–Phil Ochs lineage of “man with guitar vs. empire,” but here the guitar has been replaced by blinking machines and existential dread. This is electro art rock, punk-pop, and agitprop smashed together until the seams are very much visible. Think MGMT’s early weirdness, but if they’d spent more time doomscrolling and less time at Coachella. There is no nostalgia here. No “remember when things were better?” energy. The thesis is simpler and more horrifying: this is what you’ve got, and it’s actively decomposing.
“Hey Hey Hate!” opens the record by sprinting directly into your face with jittery electronics and theatrical fury. Schoenfeld doesn’t sing so much as prosecute. Her vocals interrogate the beat like it’s a hostile witness. It sounds like a protest chant that got accidentally fed into a modular synth and came out with opinions.
The title track settles into a tense, propulsive groove that makes your body want to dance while your brain quietly panics. That contradiction is the album’s core trick. Energy Whores are experts at making music that feels fun and alarming at the same time. You don’t get to enjoy this passively. You’re in it now. You’re complicit.
Songs like “Pretty Sparkly Things” and “Mach9ne” lean into glossy electro-punk textures, but they’re weaponized with cynicism. Schoenfeld’s background in film and theatre shows here: these tracks feel staged, like little dystopian vignettes performed under harsh fluorescent lighting. Everyone’s playing a role because the system demands it.
“Bunker Man” is the emotional pivot, where satire curdles into tragedy. It mocks paranoia and isolation while clearly understanding where they come from. “Two Minutes to Midnight” keeps the doomsday clock ticking, opting for slow-burning dread instead of spectacle. This album never lets you forget that time is running out, even when it’s being catchy about it.
By the time you reach “Little Pill,” “Electric Friends,” and “King Orange,” the record has fully locked into its mission. These tracks circle themes of consumer sedation, fake connection, hollow masculinity, and authoritarian pageantry from different angles. “King Orange” barely bothers with metaphor. It’s grotesque, obvious, and effective. Subtlety is not invited to this party.
What saves Arsenal of Democracy from collapsing into sloganism is its absolute commitment to songwriting. These are real songs. The hooks land. The beats move. The production rewards repeat listens. Schoenfeld understands that if you want people to engage with difficult ideas, you’d better make them want to press play again.
Her self-description as a “sonic insurgent” and “lyrical arsonist” sounds like branding until you realize it’s just accurate reporting. These tracks aren’t comfort food. They’re emergency flares. They’re for people who feel like everything is burning while everyone argues about font choices.
Arsenal of Democracy doesn’t offer solutions. It doesn’t offer hope in the traditional sense. What it offers is recognition: the rare, validating experience of hearing someone else scream about the same collapsing structures you’ve been quietly panicking over, and doing it in tune. In a landscape full of either empty protest songs or painfully earnest lectures, Energy Whores deliver something sharper, louder, smarter, and crucially, fun.
